THE

NEGRO
PEOPLE
ON THE

MARCH
 I -' I

THE
NEGRO PEOPLE
ON THE MARCH

By Benjamin J. Davis

NEW CENTURY PUBLISHERS: New York

1956
 PUBLISHER'S NOTE
THIS PAMPHLET contains the text of the report delivered
by Benjamin J. Davis, former New York City Councilman
and Chairman of the Negro Commission of the Communist
Party, at a meeting of the Party's National Committee, held
in New York on June 23-24, 1956.
Mr. Davis' address, taken together with the reports of
Eugene Dennis, Max Weiss and Claude Lightfoot to the
enlarged meeting of the National Committee, held on April
28-May 1, 1956, constitutes the position presented by the Party
on major issues of the day for discussion by its membership.
In setting forth this point of view, the National Commit-
tee of the Communist Party solicits comment, suggestions and
criticism from the general public as well as members of the
Party. All such communications should be addressed to: Dis-
cussion Committee, P. 0. Box 87, Cooper Station, New
York 3, N.Y.

Published by NEW CENTURY PUBLISHERS

832 Broadway, New York g, N. Y.
August, 1956 ~IU» PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
 The Negro People on the March
By BENJAMIN J. DAVIS

I. The Significance of the Negro Question Today

During the hottest part of the "cold war" of the last six years,
the walls of Jim Crow have taken such a battering as never be-
fore in the modern history of our country. This, in itself, is one
of the biggest features of the present new historical period. It is
the desire and destiny of the American Communist Party to enter
more fully into this historical process, without reservation, to help
all these walls come tumbling down. And now!
The struggle for the full social, political and economic equality
of the Negro people h as today reached its highest point since the
era of the Civil War and R econstruction. It is marked by the un-
precedented upsurge of the Negro people in the Deep South, the
main area of the n a tio n ~!, racial a nd class oppression of the Negro.
T he full impact of this new development upon American life iii
yet to be assessed- its significance is yet to be understood in all its
vast consequences.
But it is already the most dramatic single issue on the home
front and in the '56 elections. It is on the lips of every citizen. It
is the subject of songs, poetry, culture, art, politics, economics and
science. Capitalist newspapers, magazines, political leaders, statis-
ticians are all participating in the great debate concerning the
rights of the Negro people. One of the most positive aspects of the
struggle for Negro liberation is that the discussion is no longer
confined to the zealots on one hand- of which our Party has been
a proud section- or to the lynch class on the other. It is now the
property of the whole American people, which is one of the first
pre-requ isites for its success and democratic solution.
In the last six years alone, particularly during the period of the
Korean war, 1 26 books have been published by major houses on
the Negro question, not to mention scores published by small and
less well-known firms. Hundreds of studie&, surveys, handbooks, civil
3
rights volumes by the government and private organizations have
been printed. The total volume of these books would run into hun-
dreds of thousands. This reflects the growing concern in the country
over the question of Negro and general minority rights in the
United States. Although many of these volu mes, from bourgeois
sources, h ave their own axe to g rind, they reflect the mounting
interest of the nation and they are of great importance and value
to any objective sear ch for facts and trends.
The 16 millio n Negroes themselves-particularly in the Deep
South-are the primary movers in this historic upsurge. But it ex-
tends far beyond their r anks-both in its participation and in its
effects. On the national scene, one o f the first encounters that helped
turn the tide against McCarthy, at the height of his seemingly in-
vincible career, was his cruel bullying and persecution of Mrs.
Annie Lee Moss, a Negro woman. This provoked a wave of revu l-
sion among the American people-even among many prejudiced
whites- which helped to bring this would-be Hitler to heel.
On the international front, the deeds of br utal oppression against
the Negro people at home were so loud that neither the colonial
people of Asia and Africa, nor the European peoples could hear
what Mr. Dulles was saying when he boasted of American democ-
racy. The bombing of Mr. and Mrs. Harry T. Moore, the blood-
thirsty lynching of young Emmett T ill, the brutality aga inst
Autherine Lucy did far more to write American foreign policy
than the pronouncements of the State Department o r the high -
sounding communiques of Eisenhower and Eden. T he status of the
American Negro h as become an international question of more
far-reaching effects than a t any time since the rise of American im-
perialism to a world power. This has done at least two major
things: first, it has compelled even the world's most powerful
capitalism to take h eed and pull in its horns; and secondl y, it h as
brought to the Negro people and their labor-democratic supporters
a t home, trans-oceanic allies which have profoundly helped the
struggle for Negro rights. T he whole of democratic h umanity in
the U.S. and abroad are on the side of the Negro people, and are
incr easingly exercising their weight.
Another new feature of the present period is the important
gains won by the Negro people during the past six years. The
4
assessment of these gains is a m a tter of serious and h onest con-
troversy within and without our ranks and I wish to say more about
them later in this paper. But it can be said now that these gains in
their character and extent took place-for the first time in American
history-during a period when American imperialism was pursuing
a reactionary "cold war" and prosecutinF; an unjust hot war again st
the Korean and Ch inese people, brutally interfering in their in-
ternal affairs, seeking to maintain colonialism and to acquire new
bases for atomic war against the Soviet Union, China, and the
Asia n colonial revolution. But beca use this war took place in the
new historical . period-when imperialism is on the decline and
socialism and nationa l independence are on the rise-American
imperialism had to dea l somewhat differently with the insistent
demands of the Negro than when imperial ism was the only world
system, when colonialism was still en trenched , and when socialist
currents were much weaker.
It is important tha t these gains be neither overestimated no r
underestimated. Nevertheless they are of tremendous significance
and affect nearly all aspects of Negro life-jobs, 'the armed forces,
the legal arena, education, representation, the South, private
recogn ition, trade unions, government and, somewhat, housing-
It is important to note, too, tha t they did not happen just over-
night, springing like Minerva out of the brow of J ove; but that
they were prepared for over a long period of time, and most
dramatically during the R oosevelt New Deal, the growth of the
labor movement, and the subsequent victory over fascism in \Norld
War II. T he long struggles of the Negro people and the pioneering
contributions of o ur Party over the last 25 years were ind ispensable
factors.
These gains ar e also uneven in various fields of American life.
But one thing cannot be denied : T hey h ave qualitatively im-
proved the conditions of str uggle for Negro rights today in this
period. A realistic perspective has. opened up for a p eaceful and
democratic achievement of the full social, political and economic
equality of the Negro people within the framework of our specific
American system and tradition. We advocate and will work for
such a solution to take place now and not on the morrow. The
Negro people are today thinking in terms of a solution now a nd.
5
not in terms of gradualism and endless litigation for the next 100,
50 or 25 years. This is the heart and soul of the unprecedented
national a ll-class unity of the Negro people-which our Party has
always looked forward to-a unity which amounts to a national
front of the Negro people against segregation and discrimina tion
and for integra tion, on the basis of equality and dignity, into all
aspects of American life. In addition, there exists a national peo-
ple's coalition of diverse forces against segregation, which ranges
all the way from the merged labor movement of 16 million to
middle class, liberal, professional, cultural and political forces of
all races, creeds, persuasions and stations in society. Never before
in the modern history of the U.S. has the struggle for the fu ll citi-
zenship of the Negro people been so broad or its potentialities
so great.
A period of big and sharp struggles on this front lies ahead.
There is no room for complacency. The T ill lynching, the brutality
against Autherine Lucy, the bombings of Negro homes in the
North, the arrests of the Montgomery Negro leaders, the continu-
ing jim crow and national oppression against the Negro people
indicate that there are powerful white .supremacy forces that wish
to arrest the forward movement of the Negro people and their
allies. In the first place they are the Eastlands, Byrnes, Talmadges
and Shivers in the South, who are based upon the remaining feudal-
istic plantation system and who have ties with the most reactionary
sections of monopoly capital on Wall Street. There is the Dixiecrat-
Republican alliance in Washington on the politica l and legislative
front. There are the brutal, undemocratic, bourbon regimes in the
South, many of which are in open merger with the anti-Negro,
anti-labor White Citizens Councils in the Black Belt coun ties and
dties. There is the deliberate failure and apathy of the Eisenhower
Administration to enforce the law of the land, to raise the umbrella
<>f protection over the heroic Negroes and progressive whites,
which the Constitution affords. These reactionary well-heeled lynch
forces-most of whom are in high places-propose to stop at nothing
in nullifying the Supreme Court decisions, and in arresting the
forward march of democracy in the South. These forces must be
checked, isolated and rou ted.
The resistance of reaction to Negro liberation has caused a
6
national crisis in American society. The basic contradiction is be-
tween the democratic ideal of America and the jim crow oppres-
sion of the Negro people. It manifests itself in the Democratic
Party between the Dixiecrat Eastland wing and the Northern in-
dustrial liberal wing. It extends to the Republican Party, involving
the Nixon-McCarthy states rights forces on one hand and the so-
called Eisenhower-Javits moderate wing on the other. It is the
contradiction between the Negro people upholding law and order
in the South and the lawlessness and terror of the lynch regimes
in the South. Even on the economic front it manifests itself in part
in the aggressive penetration of industrial capital in the South
against the remnants of the backward plantation economy. These
contradictions arising out of the struggle for Negro rights are
affecting the whole American scene, and will affect the entire
course of American history. More immediately, this crisis will
profoundly affect the 1956 elections, with both parties feverishly
bidding for the ever more powerful Negro vote. It will continue to
affect American foreign policy and prestige in the world. It but-
tresses the cause of peace by helping to isolate those war-minded
busybodies who demand free elections in Germany while none
can be held in Mississippi. Tliis crisis must be resolved not by fascist
or betrayal method but by democratic means and measures. With
a realistic appreciation of the serious and historical obstacles,
our Party should seek to inspire confidence that this crisis can be
resolved in a democratic and peaceful manner.
The extent to which the liberation of the Negro people in the
South carries the banner of the further social progress of the na-
tion as a whole is in sharper focus today. In Congress, for example,
the obstacle to the enactment of progressive social legislation in
that body is the Dixiecrats in the first place, but also their alliance
with the more direct Republican agents of the most reactionary
anti-labor, anti-civil rights sections of Wall Street monopoly capital.
Dixiecrats, Southern Bourbons and Southern reactionary Senators
and Congressmen dominate or head nearly all the Committees in
the House and Senate. Typical is the fact that Eastland heads the
strategic Judiciary Committee, which holds the power of life and
death over all legislation in the U.S. Senate. Shame on America!
No civil rights measures h ave been passed by Congress in 6g years.
7
·But this reactionary alliance succeeded in passing Taft-Hartley,
the Walter-McCarran Law, Communist Control Act, Smith Act and
scores of others designed to hogtie and cripple the labor and Ne-
gro liberation movements, to nullify the Bill of Rights, and to
destroy constitutional democracy.
Congress can become an instrument of national social progress
when the power of the Eastland Dixiecrats is destroyed and when
the Dixiecrat-Republican alliance is broken. This necessitates a
change in the whole relationship of forces in the Deep South, with
the Negro people exercising their vote potential, and the white
workers and masses finding their self-interest with the Negro to
send to Congress men and women who uphold their vital interests.
"\1\/'inning the battle for democracy in the South is a fundamental
necessity for the social advance of the entire nation.
The Negro upsurge in the South is taking place within the con-
text of a growing democratic resistance to the destruction of the
Bill of Rights and civil liberties. It is taking place within the frame-
work of specific American conditions and on the basis, not of con-
ditions of 20 years ago, but on conditions of today, an entirely
new historical period.
These general observations of the total scene are by no means
exhaustive. However, they do sketch a few of the new features on
the broad canvas upon which the upsurge of the Negro is taking
place. Let us now examine some of the specific developments of
this struggle.

II. The South

The main development to be noted in the struggle for Negro
rights in the present period -is that its center of gravity is shifting
from the North to the South. The Negro people in the North,
together with their labor and progressive allies, still play a potent
role in the struggle. But the new factor to be noted, seized upon
and developed is the change in the geographical center of this
struggle.
This factor is all to the good, must be developed and given the
utmost support. The Black Belt counties and urban centers con-
stitute the area of the most frightful and bestial oppression of
8
the Negro. It is the sac from which the poison of white supremacy
seeps through the whole of American life. Once it is tackled and
dammed up there, not only will the whole South benefit thereby,
but so will the Negro people in the North, the labor movement
and the whole nation. Every American Negro, wherever he may
be, bears upon his back the "false mark of inferiority" branded
upon him by the lynch oppressors of the Negro in the South.
Removal of this brand in the South is a basic step toward the
removal of the stench of the slave market from the whole of Amer-
ican life.
The vanguard of the Negro people's upsurge in the South is the
bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala. At the same time various phases ·
of this upsurge are to be noted in Mississippi, South Carolina,
Florida, Georgia and other states.
The bus boycott in Montgom~ry is a unique phenomenon in
modern U.S. history. It began on December 5, 1955, and is still
going strong 9 months later. It has already spread to Tallahassee,
Fla., there initiated largely by Negro students. Students, both Ne-
gro and white, in the South play a unique role.
Montgomery was the capital of the Confederacy. Its monuments
and landmarks still stand as courtly inspiration to the heirs of the
slaveowners who would perpetuate in the modern South the feudal
relics of the past. But Montgomery is an important industrial
center a ud a fresh breeze is blowing through the magnolia trees
in Montgomery, not alone from the Negro people, but from a
growing section of the whites. In this setting, the Negro people
are demonstrating magnificent heroism and courage, fully in keep-
ing with the finest tradi tions of the Negro, of labor and the Ameri-
~~~- .
More than· 42,000 Negroes refuse to ride the city busses every
day. Some of them walk as much as 14 miles a day, through rain,
mud and at severe risks to their health and safety. Over 99 of their
leaders and rank and filers have been indicted and arrested. Their
homes have been bombed; intimidation and terror have been used
against them. But they stand firm and walk hard.
This historic mass struggle began spontaneously from below
with the Negro workers, domestic servants, and Negro women play-
ing a major role. It was precipitated by the arrest and conviction
9
and manhandling of Mrs. Rosa Parks, a Negro seamstress, who
refused to move to the rear of a bus. Explained Mrs. Parks on why
she refused to move: "It was a matter of dignity. I could not have
faced myself and my people if I had moved."
In this struggle the Negro masses chose their own leaders-
among them the Rev. Martin Luther King, 27 years old, Rev.
Ralph Abernathy, E. D. Nixon, 57, a pullman porter and a mem-
ber of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters for more than 30
years. The Montgomery Improvement Association, organized to
conduct the boycott, is headed by Rev. King, its President, and Mr.
Nixon, its treasurer. Here is a splendid blending of the old and
the new, the combination of the seasoned trade union experience
with the zeal and idealism of youth. Here, too, is an example of the
highly central role played by the Negro church.
The three most important original demands of the struggle
were: First come, first served from rear to .f ront; an end to brutal·
ities against Negro passengers; and the hiring of Negro bus drivers,
covering Negro communities. These modest d emands were refused
e~en though they did not challenge the basic evil of segregation.
Their elementary, non-political character undoubtedly reflected
the problems of keeping united the whole Negro community in
struggle, a skill£ul tactic born of trade union experience.
But in the course of the struggle it has been transformed to a
higher level. Its unity has grown and it has received strength
nationally and internationally. The Alabama District Federal Court
recently declared bus segregation illegal, basing itself upon the
Supreme Court school decision. Now the boycotters have declared
they will never return to segregated busses. The Alabama State
offi.cials have filed an appeal against the decision, and the maximum
public pressure on a nation-wide scale should come i:.o the support
of the Alabama District Court decision.
The most outstanding new tactic of the boycott is its non-
violent resistance-a variation of the Gandhian non-violent passive
resistance. This is a fully militant device. It is practical, since the
Negro people are not only outnumbered, but are without weapons
to wage a shooting battle, even if they wished to. This form of strug-
gle shows that they do not wish to. Further, the tactic exposes the
true advocates and practitioners of force and violence, namely the
10
state a nd local regimes, the White Citizens Councils and the Klan
lynchers. It emphasizes the peaceful democratic character of the
struggle, placing the responsibility for lawlessness and disorder on
the white supremacists. It draws to the Negro people of Mont-
gomery the tremendous moral power and force of American public
and religious opinion. Moreover, the eyes of the world are sym-
pa thetically on this non-violent struggle. The non-violent form o£
the struggle reflected the fact that it is based h eavily on the church,
drawing deeply upon the fighting, as well as peace loving, trad i-
tions of the Negro church and the Negro ministry.
The all-class unity of the struggle was again demonstrat~d in
the application of a group of Negro community figures to charter
their own bus line. This too was refused by the city fathers. Al-
though the struggle here and in other parts of the South is led by
middle class and petit-bourgeois leaders and intellectuals, in Mont-
gomery it is the Negro workers, men and women, who are the solid
backbone of the boycott. The boycott is both a protest and an
aggressive struggle, under the leadership of middle class and
reformist personnel, but heavily reflecting working class policies.
T he use of mass economic power to achieve democratic and peace-
ful objectives is characteristic of labor. Here the Negro people of
Montgomery are using economic power to secure their constitu-
tional rights, to uphold law and order, to seek enforcement of the
law of the land against the lawlessness of segregation, injustice
and indignity.
A new and significant factor in the upsurge of the Southern Ne-
gro is that his leadership is coming out of and is native to the South
itself. This is true not only of the boycott struggle in Montgomery;
but it is equally true of Mississippi, with its state council of Ne-
gro leaders; of South Carolina with its counter-economic squeeze
organization; of Florida, with its civic league conducting the
Tallahassee bus boycott; of Georgia and other Southern states.
Up until a few short years ago the Negro movement in the South
was receiving its leadership almost entirely from the North-from
the Negro ·p roletariat in the Northern and Western urban centers.
While the Negro and allies in the North play a big role in the
Southern struggles, an ever-increasing shift is being made toward
the centering of this leadership in the South. World War I marked
11
a new Negro in the North; World War II has brought forward a
new Negro in the South. This, it is hoped, will encourage no
underestimation of the profound role to be played in this struggle
by the Negro proletariat and its allies in the Northern, mid-Western
and Far West cities.
The South has never been solid. It has given the appearance of
being so, because of the peace of the graveyard, imposed by force
and violence, upon the Negro people. Today, the biggest testimo-
nial to the fact that the South is not solid is the historic upsurge
of the Negro people, who are in the first place native Southerners.
At the same time, the large percentage of white Southerners who are
on record for school desegergation, who have elected Negroes to
public office, as .i n Atlanta in 1953, indicate a further unfreezing
of the Solid South, and the fertile potentialities for fruitful mass
work among the Southern white workers and citizenry.
An important aspect of the non-violent ch aracter of the Mont-
gomery bus boycott is its positive influence upon the white masses.
There has been a small but growing support among religious,
liberal and other sections of the white population for the struggle,
due in no small part to the limited unionization in the South, but
also to other factors. Undoubtedly, peaceful, non-resistant methods
have influenced the strong stand taken by the white Protestant
and Catholic churches in the South. The bulk of the white masses
are neither aggressively hostile, nor active supporters. Insufficient
data is available on this aspect of the situation. But the very fact
that such a sharp struggle can develop in the former capital of the
Confederacy, without re<:eiving active white mass hostility, indi-
cates changes in the thinking of the white masses. Even the mass
lynch rally addressed by Eastland in Montgomery this year, under
the auspices of the White Citizens Council, did not result in the
so-called " race riot" and violence deliberately incited by this
white supremacist. World-wide democratic currents affect Southern
whites as well as Southern Negroes.
Thdugh the Southern white masses are still saturated with
chauvinist prejudices, the huge festival lynchings, participated in
by large gatherings, and organized by the Klan, no longer feature
the Southern scene. Lynchings are now carried out by bombings,
assassinations, and individual terrorists at the beck of the White
12
Citizens Council and its state governmental allies and members.
Accompanying these murderous tactics, is the new weapon-the
economic squeeze, used to keep the Negro people in subjection
and to choke off the forward march of integration and Southern
democracy. Only men of financial and political power can wage
this type of war against whole Negro communities.
In the Negro people's upsurge in the South, there is a diversity
in the framework of the Negro people's unity. Based upon uneven
conditions in various states, the Negro in different states develops
different weapons. But the unity common to the entire Southern
area is the fight for the right to vote, the fight to end jim crow and
extend democracy as the guarantee of their dignity and full citizen-
ship.
The organizational center of this movement is the NAACP.
The majority of the NAACP membership is today in the South.
The NAACP with its associate movements, churches and organiza-
tions in the South has become the principal rallying center of the
Negro people's movement today. It contains in and around it nearly
all diverse trends among the Negro people within the framework
of the national unity of the Negro people for full citizenship and
integration. It has been profoundly affected by the influence of
labor, and the Negro workers. Its methods of struggle are no longer
confined exclusively to the legal arena, although that is increasingly
important; it has associated itself with mass activity, tactics and
pressure. In the South, its flexibility is shown hy the fact that just
as it is outlawed, other organizations are established to continue
the struggle within the extremely limited framework of legality.
The big obstacle to this militant and united upsurge of the Ne-
gro people in the South is the bitter and murderous resistance put
up by the white supremacist Bourbon ruling class and its rotten,
unrepresentative state and local regimes. Spearheading this resist-
ance are the Eastlands, Byrnes, Talmadges and Shivers gangs. The
White Citizens Councils are the principal terror organization of the
South. It has been described as the new Klan. It is utilizing murder,
reviving lynching, assassination, economic squeezes and other fas-
cist-like methods designed to starve the Negroes, and their white
liberal supporters, into submission. It is, with its reactionary Wall
Sp·eet masters, seriously imperilling the gains of the Negro people.
13
 Its champion, Eastland, should become as universally despised as
the late Sen. Bilbo.
The Councils are new and somewhat different from the Klan.
They are composed not of a few motley racketeers and demagogues,
but of the so-called "best people." Plantation owners, processors,
landlords, bankers, industrialists and state officials comprise its
board of directors. Fearing for its privileged position on the backs
of the white workers and farmers, as well as on the backs of the
Negroes, they h ave taken the white-supremacy banners in their own
hands. T hey don't fully trust the white masses to carry the ball.
T he Councils, with their tremendous political and economic power,
are having the NAACP outlawed in one state after another,
simultaneously entrenching their own members and reviving the
Kla n to do its dirty work. It's not so easy in 1956 as it was in 1926
to incite the white workers to mass lynchings, so the bosses have
taken over themselves.
The Councils h ave fanned out their a ttacks to the trade union
movement. Basing themselves upon the old primitive prejudices
of Southern white workers, they have had certain serious successes,
and represent a first-class menace to the labor movement, parti-
cularly to the AFL-CIO Southern organizing drive. But the new
thing is that for the first time an increasing number of Southern
white workers are rising to do ba ttle against them. This was an
outstanding fea ture of the recent Textile Workers Union conve n-
tion . The common resistan ce of the Southern white unionists and
the Negro against the White Citizens Councils can become a pres-
sure for the growth of Negro-white unity and for strengthening the
Negro-labor alliance in the South.
Another danger to the hard-earned reforms won by the Negro
people is the attempt at nullification of and interposition against
the Supreme Court desegregation decision. Southern Bourbons
hope to tie up the decision and delay enforcement by years of
futile litiga tion. In the effort to pump some life into the discredited
states rights doctrine, Eastland and McCarthy have joined hands
to curb the Supreme Court's power to implement the 13th, 14th
and 15th Amendments. D angerous legislation to this end hangs
fire in Washington now. Under the guise of states rights, the in-
famous right-to-work laws exist in many states. More and more,
14
the fight for civil liberties, against the union-busting r!ght to work
laws, and civil rights are merging into a common powerful stream.
An economic crisis, war or fascism could seriously endanger
the gains in the South and set back the positive developments tak-
ing place.
The failure of the Federal government, under Eisenhower, dur-
ing this period of the most grievous attacks against the Constitu-
tion and the Negro people of the South presents- once more in the
2oth Century, as in the 19th-the danger of another Republican
betrayal which would leave the Negro to the tender mercies of the
Southern Bourbon class. G.O.P. ambitions in the '56 elections ac'
centuate that danger. There are ample powers and laws on the
books to permit the Attorney General to outlaw the White Citi-
zens Councils, to prosecute and jail its leaders for their brazen
lynchings and other crimes.
The national coalition for Negro rights should direct its
main attack against the Eastlands, Byrn es a nd Talmadges and the
White Citizens Councils which are organized perpetrators of racist
crimes.
And the broadest front for upholding the Supreme Court de-
cision as the law of the land should be organi zed in the Deep South
in accordance with the specific poli tical level of that region. All
those to the left of the Eastlands, who believe in law and order,
are potential members of this front.
The maximum public opinion should be mobilized to compel
the Eisenhower Administration to take whatever measures neces-
sary to enforce the Constitution, the Supreme Court decisions and
all other protections and guarantees of full citizenship for Negro
Americans in the Deep South. If American boys- Negro and white
-can be shipped sooo miles abroad to meddle into other nations'
affairs, certainly they can be sent into the South-as the Constitu-
tion requires- to uphold the law of the land, to guarantee that Ne-
gro citizens, as well as white, exercise the ballot and other citizen-
ship rights.

Ill. Some General Conclusions About the South

1. The Negro people in the South, as well as throughout the
15
country, have a growing consciousness of their strength, and of the
power of unity and organization. They are detennined to use this
strength, in concert with their allies, to achieve their full economic,
social and political equality now and not on the basis of "gradu al·
ism and moderation" in some vague and distant future.
2. The Negro people are conscious of the necessity to struggle.
Historically aware of the gap between the law and the actual
exercise of their full citizenship rights, they are relying more than
ever on their own struggles to help transform their legal rights into
reality. Even after the federal court in Montgomery outlawed
segregation the bus boycott is continuing, and spreading to other
states.
3· The bus boycott is a successful variation of non-violent re-
sistance when used under given conditions, such as those existing
in Montgomery and other urban centers of the South.
a. It reflects the fact that 1 f 2 of the 10 million Negroes in
the South have migrated to the Southern urban centers, and
are now able to use their mass economic power as a weapon.
The national question in the South can no longer be con-
sidered as a purely peasant question.
b. Within the framework of the North-South and Negro-
wage differentials, the Negro workers in urban communities
have benefited in a limited manner from the expansion and
militarization of the economy and are now able to wage stronger
battles for their rights. Negroes in Montgomery are contribut-
ing some $3oo a day for a car pool, with mlcldle class profes-
sionals sharing the expense, lending cars, money, etc.
4· Exercise of the right to vote is the central common demand
among the Negroes against the jim crow system. In urban centers,
in particular, Negro workers are paying the poll tax and financing
huge registration and vote campaigns. Before certain limited eco-
nomic improvements took place, they couldn't pay the poll tax.
The right of the Negro people to vote would change the whole re-
lationship of forces in the South and in the nation.
5· Negroes in the South consider their movement for liberation
a part of the world-wide struggle of the colonial people for inde-
pendence, dignity and self-government. But the form of their
struggle under American conditions is integration.
16
 6. Up to Bandung and Geneva, sections of the ruling class ;
sought to modify certain excesses of fm crow oppression of Ne-
groes, in view of the socialist and democratic world currents and
in order to win allies for its proposed atomic war against the So-
viet Union, China and the colonial movements. With the recession
of the war danger, the reactionary and repressive national unity has .
weakened and sharp class and national contradictions have erupted.
Finally, the situation in the South requires that our Party
marshal its full strength to assist the Negro people' s movement
and to speed democratization of the South. This is our most glaring ·
example of right opportunist passivity. We must base ourselves
on the unique American features of this movement, and on the ·
realistic course the Negro people have chosen for themselves. This - ·
is true even though we must avoid an orientation that this ques-
tion is beyond the science of Marxism-Leninism, common to all
countries, but must search for the adaptation of that science to
specific American conditions, and to the actual level of Southern
life.
Giving every support to and participation in the national fronts
of the Negro people and in the general mainstream for Negro rights.
is our principal task. But the Party should develop its own van-
guard people's program and should work for the leadership of the
Negro workers within the context of the all-class unity of the
Negro movement.
Such a program, in view of the latest developments of the last.
year or so, should involve at least:
1. End of all forms of segregation, jim crow and discrimination
in all aspects of Southern life.
2. Enforcement of the Supreme Court decision on desegrega-
tion. People's and labor committees should be organized to achieve
immediate compliance.
3· R eject gradualism and develop a realistic people's program
to achieve desegregation and full integration now and to block
years of endless litigation and stalling.
4· Center on the guarantee of the right to vote calling on the
federal government for federal protection and guarantees in the
exercise of this right. Abolish poll tax and the new intelligence
tests.
 5· Support and encourage legal and mass assaults upon segre-
gation in restauran ts, hotels, parks and other public places in the
South.
6. Develop a concrete program of land reform for sharecrop-
pers and tenant farmers and agricultural workers whose level of
living among Negroes is still less than $742 a year, and whose con-
ditions have become often worse as a result of industrializa tion,
mechanization and diversification of crops. Full support to " In
Friendshi p," the finan cial aid apparatus of the United State of the
Race Committee of the Negro leaders.
7· Outlaw the White C itizens Councils and Klans, jailing its
leaders, and prosecuting them for murder a nd lynching. R emoval
of Eastland from the Senate. Federal disaster aid for all victims of
the economic squeeze. Passage of anti-lynch legislation.
8. Decisive is the Southern organizing drive of the AFL.-CIO.
Passage of FEP legisla tion. This drive is the key to basic change
in the South, to Negro-white unity upon which the whole edifice
of advanci ng democracy must be built. This drive will not take
place automatically since it foundered once before. It must be
fought for.
This program is not intended to replace the contributions al-
ready made on this front by the Southern people's common pro-
gram, published by the Southern R egional Committee of the Com-
munist Party in March 1953. That program was a positive contri-
bution to the tasks which are even sharper today.
Our work and attitude toward the South over the last decade
has been heavily marked by left-sectarianism and other mistakes
a nd by a shocking failure to keep up with developments in that
region. We h ave lagged badly in applying our Marxist-Leninist
science to changes in the South. But as to the status of our organ-
ization in the South, let us not forget the almost terrifying condi-
tions under which our members have h ad to work there, and the
brutal conditions of illegality which the Southern Bourbon class
has imposed upon the Party over a number of years. Undoubtedly,
it is on the agenda that new forms of organization be considered
for the South. We should approach this question in as creative
a manner as the outlawed sections of the NAACP which are flex-
ibly adopting new forms of organization as a result of the outlawing
18
of their organization in Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and other
states. The NAACP and other Negro and labor organizations are
getting a taste of the bitter persecution which our Party has suf-
fered in the South for more than 25 years.
But the beginning point for our Party is to radically overcome
its gross and entrenched neglect of the South, with respect to atten-
tion, above all, forces, and policy. This is the prerequisite to our
contributions to the new and historical opportunities and relation-
ships for progressive development in the South.
Certainly, we should not idealize the bus boycott nor the other
struggles in the South. These movements face serious problems and
dangers, to be solved and avoided. There are questions of per-
spectives, winning the white workers and masses, raising the de- ·
mands of the sharecroppers and poor farmers, tactical and basic
economic questions. The contributions of Marxists are badly
needed, and occasionally in demand. But first we have to be present
in the flesh.
We must commend such militant young leaders in the South
as Hunter O'Dell, who virtually bearded Eastland in Louisiana,
and all our Negro and white Southern comrades who have worked
heroically in the most trying circumstances. Many of these are now
in the North, where our political relations with them are vital.
This is not to mention the contributions of Jackson, Scales, Strong
and others, and especially those who are still on the firing line in
the South today.
Our Party has to eliminate all approaches of routinism on the
South and recapture for the new conditions of this period its famous
crusading spirit.
IV. The Negro People's Movement and the North
The national all-class unity of the Negro people for full integra-
tion finds them more united than ever before in modern history.
This movement is under the leadership of Negro reformists, the
middle class and Social Democratic labor leaders, who h ave acquired
tremendous prestige as a result of the limited concessions recently
made on Negro rights. This reflects too the growth in the Negro
middle class. Although we must not idealize them, nor fail to see
the decisive role of the Negro workers and masses in the recent
19
gains, these leaders are moving in a positive direction, and deserve
fullest support. The main obstacle to the correct efforts of the Party
leadership in New York and elsewhere over the last three years to
obtain such a positive evaluation has been a certain sectarian re-
sistance to the all-class nature of the Negro people's unity.
The recently organized state-of-the-race coordinating commit-
tee is of tremendous significance. It indicates a conscious striving
on the part of the Negro people and their leaders to coordinate
all trends and bodies in Negro life. They all seek a fundamental
change in the status of the Negro people, a common agreement
on issues for the maximum impact, and a conscious desire to subor-
dinate all schisms. But we should not underestimate the strains
here. Thus we find a Congressman Powell, a Wilkins, a Dr. Howard,
a R andolph and others- all with diverse approaches-but acting
in concert on the central issues. Such an approach for unity reflects
the growing influence of the greatly increased Negro proletariat,
whose influence should be enhanced within the framework of the
present national Negro all-class unity. H ere we s_h ould avoid all
narrow and sectarian ways of achieving this objective.
Towards this movement in its inception we were hampered
by sectarianism. We have h ad a. tendency to impose upon the Ne-
groes our concept of what the most important issues are, rather
than the issues they choose as a necessity for their further develop-
ment in our society. We need to pay more attention to the program
of the Negro people's organizations. We h ave too frequently relied
upon headlines for our policy, seizing upon that which is most
dramatic, which accounts for strong tendencies toward spontaneity
in our work in this field. While this is exceedingly important,
we must give more attention to the vital aspira tions of the Negroes
as they express them in relation to specific American conditions.
Our severe isolation in the last period has hampered the extensive
mass ties which alone can keep us in close touch with the thinking
of the Negroes in the shops, farms, communities and in the Deep
South.
The Negro is vitally aware of the growth of automation, South-
ern industrialization and diversification. He knows the U nited
Sta tes is entering an atomic and chemical age, superimposed upon
an already highly-developed production economy. He does not
20
want to be left behind at a time when certain limited opportunities,
war-made though they are, are opening up. He wishes to over-
come the 300 year scars of poverty, technical handicaps, disease
imposed upon him by capitalist oppression. Education therefore
fulfills one of his vital needs and enforcement of the school desegre-
gation decision is in the first place an expansion of the Negroes'
educational facilities. Under any and all circumstances, Negroes
wish to improve the conditions of their life. It fulfills a vital in-
ternal need of the Negro people. The Negro seeks to measure in
human equipment with all other Americans and is fighting to secure
health and educ~tional technical skills to blot out the disease which
has preyed upon him, the enforced lag in education and skill .
which centuries of violent oppression have left him. The effort to
secure a simple health clinic for a Negro community could mush-
room into a burning popular issue. We must base ourselves upon
first hand knowledge of the changed conditions in the Negro com-
munities.
Housing, education, and health are among the most vital de-
mands of the Negro people, especially in the North. In some areas,
these are more acute than jobs, although obviously in Detroit and
other urban centers of unemployment, jobs are most urgent. The
main demands of the Northern Negr<? communities are for integra-
tion in housing, education and jobs. Because of the large Negro
migration to the North, the school issue is one of the biggest and
most popular in the North. Om: slogan in New York, and in other
urban Northern centers, should be: Make New York a model town
of Democratic Integration! Negroes are themselves demanding in-
tegration in public projects in H arlem, for example. But note
must be taken of the explosive tenseness in Detroit and other
northern urban centers a5 a result of unemployment, bombings
of Negro homes and such situations as Trumbull Park in Chicago.
Another alphabetical name must become as hated among the peo-
ple as the White Citizens Councils-namely, NAREB-the Na-
tional Associa tion of R eal Estate Boards, a powerful and vicious
lobby aimed at maintaining the ghetto. It is in the field of housing
in the North that some of the most violen_t lynch practices are
taking place against the Negro. The possibility of winning victories
against jim crow in the North are better than the South, especially
21
because of the higher development of the Negro-labor alliance
above the Mason-Dixon line, and the freer opportunities of strug-
gle. It should b<: noted, however, that the White Citizens Councils
are now appearing in the North, for example in the Detroit area,
where it represents a twin danger to labor, to the Negro and to the
Negro·labor alliance.
Just as the center of gravity of the Negro liberation movement
is shifting to the South, so the main source of the national all-class
unity of the Negroes stems from the Negro struggles in the South.
Negroes in the North are today mainly playing a supporting role
to the bus boycott, right-to-vote, and anti-lynch upsurge of the
Southern Negroes. This role of the Negroes in the North is not
to be underestimated. But it's a serious weakness in this united Ne-
gro movement that it hasn't sufficiently merged the economic and
civil rights issues of the Negroes in the North with those of the
Negroes in the South. Communists have a vital role to play in
helping to join these issues in one mainstream, and in helping to
give the whole a conscious anti-monopoly outlook and a socialist
perspective.
Taking advantage of the fact that the limited reforms of the
jim crow system were made during the cold and Korean wars, the
monopolists and the government exert heavy pressures on Negro
leaders to force them to be aggressive troubadours of the State
Department's reactionary foreign policy. There are diverse ap-
proaches among these leaders. But this attempt has met with only
partia l success. The best guarantee against this danger is the in-
fluence of the Negro workers and masses and the popular influence
of our Party. At the same time, our attitude toward the Negro peo-
ple's movement can never again be that foreign policy is the
decisive test, but rather the conditions and needs of the Negro peo-
ple themselves. Our past practices in this respect, notably in our
negative attitude toward the Pittsburgh Courier's double-V cam-
paign during World War II, did our Party considerable damage,
just now fully coming home to roost. This has been a serious
ideological handicap to our Party in general, and to our able Ne-
gro cadre in particular. It fed the slander that we seek to use the
Negro people.
Our Party's recently past role in the Negro people's movement
22
has been weak in terms of slogans, program and practical activity.
We are today playing an entirely supporting role, too often a side
line role, behind the often vague and fragmentary slogans of bour-
geois leaders-Negro and white. But we do not seek to capture or
dominate any organizations or sectors of the Negro people's move-
ment. An example of the magnificent initiative taken by our Party
was its work in the Chicago South Side in reacting to the Till lynch·
ing. Around this issue, the Party in several states made important
contributions.
We have a modest but vital role to play in helping to widen
and unite this movement, also in strengthening it with the legiti· .
mate participation of the most advanced forces among the Negro
people. One of the weaknesses of this movement is that it does not
have the integration of su ch staunch forces as Robeson, DuBois
and numerous outstanding Negro trade unionists. We must never
give up the struggle for the special right of the Negro to hold any
political view he wishes without reprisal, private or official. This
must be done in new ways of broadening unity.
We must find the ways and means under new conditions of
bringing forward our Party's face a nd independent position. We
must put an end to tailism, manifested not only in our practical
struggles and initiative, but also in our slogans, demands and per-
spectives.
Characteristic of the Negro people's movement today is that it
is demanding more and more. While every small gain encourages
the Negro people, it only whets their appetites and demands for
more, for their full unconditional equality and human dignity
now. T his is not only correct, but our Party should welcome and
encourage it, for it has contributed to these growing aspirations of
the Negro. T he great virtue of this movement is that the Negroes
are moving as a people from top to bottom, despite the many cur-
rents within it. Communists and other left forces should work in
the Negro people's movement, not through claiming any superiority
of ideology, but modestly by the performance of the most simple
concrete tasks in a most principled, efficient and loyal manner.
Our Party in many states has begun in recent months to make im-
portant contributions to the mass struggle for Negro rights,
strengthening its ties witlt broader labor and people's organizations.
lllJ
 V. Recent Gains of the Negro People
Over the last six years the Negro people and their white sup-
porters have won a number of important and significant gains in
their battle against jim crow. These gains are an extension of those
begun during the Roosevelt New Deal and World War II periods.
A precise and detailed examination of these gains is still to be
made, but their pattern is somewhat apparent. They touch virtually
every field of American life; they are uneven, and too often merely
token.
Among the most dramatic are the integration of the armed
forces; the federal court decisions against school segregation and
bus transportation; the elections and appointment of Negroes to
previous lily-white offices, etc. They extend to jobs, health and
nursing facilities, to sports and culture, trade unions, increase of
Negroes in state and federal government agencies and branches,
and to the South. A 27-year-old young American Negro is today
one of the greatest tennis players in the world, if not the greatest.
Lynchi ngs h ave decreased and the lynch class has been compelled
to change its tactics. There are only five states in the Deep South
with . the poll tax-Alabama, Arkansas, Virginia, Mississippi and
Texas. Important victories, have been won against the white
primar ies in the South, increasing the Negroes' voting strength.
The least gains, in my opinion, have been made in the field of
housing, where the ghettoes of the Northern urban centers still
exist, and have even become more stiflingly dense, reflecting the
mass migration of the Negroes to the North. Nearly eve'r y effort
on the part of the Negro people is met by bomb-viol~nce, inspired
by the realty lords. Although restrictive covenants cannot be en-
forced in the courts, they have not been outlawed. Today they are
enforced by force and violence.
Breaking into new industries and upgrading for Negro workers
is very spotty. Negroes have made little or no progress in the skilled
trades. They are still predominantly in the heaviest, dirtiest and
most dangerous jobs with the lowest wages. There has been an
absolute improvement in the Negro family's economic position,
and this is extremely important even though within the frame-
work of job jim crow. But relative to the white workers there's
24
been little narrowing the gap and in some areas it has gotten wider.
This is especially true in the Deep South. There, the Negro share-
croppers, farmers and agricultural workers live on a sub-human
wage which must be improved while they're on the farms. An
estimated 5 million Negroes are still in the rural farm areas and
they are the most forgotten men of the boasted American high liv-
ing standards. The advancement of Negro women from domestic
service is three times less than white women.
The civil rights gains have amounted largely to a relaxation o~
only the rawest forms of racist persecution of the Negro people.
But they are of important significance. While the economic ones
are important they have been made within the framework of the
basic jim crow system still existing against the Negro people. The
Negroes of the U.S. are still an oppressed people, and the area of
their most brutal oppression is still the Southern Black Belt. The
Till murder, the Autherine Lucy case, the legal whitewash of the
lynchers shows how unbearable that oppression is-and so does
the bus boycott which was provoked by the unendurable brutality
toward Negro passengers.
These gains were the result of the struggles of the Negro peo-
ple themselves, supported by their white labor and progressive
allies on a nation-wide scale. They were powerfully influenced by
world socialist and other democratic pressures, led by the Soviet
Union, China and the colonial struggles in Asia and Africa. They
were assisted by the influence of the neutralist countries led by
India. They were helped by the early pioneering, the present exist-
ence and self-sacrificing contributions of our Party.
Other American pressures had effect. In the first place the exist-
ence of a 15 billion dollar market among the Negro people-a
market larger than that of Canada and Latin America combined.
The Wall Street monopolists are compelled to utilize and enhance
this market, faced as they are by the shrinkage in their world
markets and by competition from the Soviet Union and the world
socialist system. Secondly, the monopolists need to exploit more
fully the Negro potential, driving it into certain utilizable con-
tradictions with the backward plantation economy in the South. A
study financed by several Wall Street corporations advocates that
Negroes and whites live and mingle together from childhood. Cer-
25
tain Northern-owned and new industries in the Deep South like
the Montgomery bus company have offered to end segregation on
the bus in order to guarantee its operational profits. In certain
Northern-owned plants, where unions exist, there has been inte-
gration in the heart of the South. Such coincidences of interests
between the Negro people and specific industrial interests can and
should be utilized, no matter how temporary.
The reforms in the armed forces during the Korean war showed
a combination of at least four factors. Under fire from the Asian
colonial and socialist-led peoples, the government could not ap-
pear as a defender of democracy with a jim crow army as its ambas-
sador in the Far East. Secondly, integration increased the efficiency
and fighting potential of the army, which we always advocated.
Thirdly, the Negro people pointedly struggled against jim crow
in the armed forces, conscious of the gap between actual democracy
and U.S. imperialist pretensions in the war. Fourthly, the numerous
brutalities and injustices against Negro soldiers in the Far East,
resulting in brutal court-martials, dea th sentences and filling the
federal prisons. Our Party was among the first to raise sharply the
jim-crow injustices against Negro troops in the Korean war. The
positive effects of integrating Negroes and whites together in the
armed forces will ultimately be far-reaching and especially in the
South. This was a blow against the white supremacist neurosis
against social equality.
The h anded-down character of these concessions, beginning with
the bourbon-led armed forces, revealed at once its design to allay
interna tional pressure-one of the most powerful allies of Negro
liberation. But we should not underestimate the specific American
pressures for these reforms, nor fail to use all internal contradic-
tions of American society and policy to maintain and extend them.
The very fact that these gains were extended through the execu-
tive and judicial branches of the federal government and not
through the legislative is of particular significance. T he U.S.
monopolists were speedily trying to mobilize allies for a projected
atomic war on the Socialist countries; this had to be done quickly
and with the least basic uprooting of the national oppression of
the Negro. To have utilized the Congress would have required
defeating the Dixiecrats, breaking up the Dixiecrat-Republican
ll6
alliance and enfranchising 10 million Negroes and whites in the
South. But this makes the Congressional elections and the pending
civil rights legislation in Congress a thousand times more im-
portant. Nor should the contradictions between the various
branches of the federal government escape exploitation.
The basic significance of these gains is that they relieve in some
small way some of the most humiliating and spectacular practices
of jim crow brutality against the Negro people. Moreover, they
have unleashed a flood of democratic currents designed to under-
mine the whole jim crow system. Secondly, they radically improve
the conditions and atmosphere for the Negro people and their
white allies to pursue with all vigor the struggle for full Negro
liberation. They help to multiply the allies of the Negro people
among millions of even prejudiced whites. The Supreme Court
decision in the school cases outlawed in principle the whole legal
basis of segregation, undermined the whole myth of white suprem-
acy even though it set the stage for another big betrayal by its
dillydallying with enforcement and implementation of the decision.
In enforcing the decree, it's the old story of leaving the cat to
watch the milk.
We must associate ourselves with the realistic Negro people who
hail every minor relief from the degrading jim crow system and
recognize too they are not satisfied. Even during these gains, it
was the mass revulsion of the Negro workers and communities
which repudiated the State Department's Negro apol<?gists who
travelled abroad exaggerating the happy conditions of Negroes
in America. Even the militant Congressman Powell felt the power
of Negro people's criticism after his Bandung trip and has vowed
publicly that he'll never do that one again. One talented Negro
writer, Saunders Redding, was so embarrassed by the questions
asked him in India that he wrote a book saying in effect, "What
did I get into?"
Yet it would be utopian to assume that these gains under the
conditions in which they were won will not strengthen the illusions
of the Negro people and their allies in the nature and aims of
American capitalism.
These gains today face imminent perils. Forces of reaction seek
to reverse them. Cong. Powell has already exposed the fact that
27
there are hard cores of segregation still in the armed forces, and
that the Poll Tax Gen. Mark Clark is moving might and main to
reinstall segregation in the armed forces. The revival of lynching
in the South and the emergence of an open alliance between Mc-
Carthy and Eastland against Negroes' labor and civil liberties
threaten the march toward progress. The fascist-minded monopolies
still have a stranglehold on the American system, strengthened dur-
ing the Eisenhower regime. Crisis factors, the farm situation-all
whet fears of an economic downturn. The Federal government
still refuses to enforce the rights of the Negro people in the South,
with Eisenhower playing footsie with Negro rights. A replica of
the betrayal of 1877 has to be prevented in the modern America
of 1956.
Persecu tion of the most militant spokesmen of the Negro peo-
ple, Marxists and non-Marxists, continues in cold war fashion, with
many of our ablest leaders, Hall, Green, Winston, Thompson,
Flynn and others, still in prison.
These gains must be maintained and extended. The whole rot-
ten system of jim crow segregation, and white chauvinist persecu-
tion must be destroyed. Nothing less will satisfy the Negro's vital
interests nor the needs of American democracy. These gains can
be expanded to new heights, and new frontiers against jim crow
crossed. In this regard, our Party must approach its responsibilities
with a sense of urgency, prepared to play its role in the titanic
struggles ahead. At the present time, it does not have that sense
of urgency.
The attitude of underestimating these gains, that they amount
to nothing can only deepen the isolation of our Party. While all
a ttempts to overestimate them, including that the solution of the
Negro question is all over, results in passivity in the struggle for
Negro rights. We must take stock of these gains soberly and see
what they contribute to strengthening the struggle to smash the
entire jim crow system.

VI. On Party Problems

In adjusting ourselves to the new and radical changes which
must be made in our Party's work, under no circumstances should
.28
the pioneering and unique contributions of our Party to Negro
rights be sold short, belittled or apologized for. Our Party was the
first in modern America to arouse the conscience of the nation and
of the world to the bestial oppression of the Negro people and to
their valiant contributions to American democracy. Over the past
25 years, it has steadfastly continued these contributions, despite
mistakes and weaknesses. The improvements and corrections which
need to be made in our work in this field must be based upon a
due regard for the positive role and contributions of our Party
in the past for Negro rights. The corrections we must now make
are to enable us to substantially improve our contributions.
We should avoid also, it seems to me, a tendency to under-
estimate the consequences of the hard blows imposed upon our
Party by government harassment, persecution, Smith Act trials,
including the imprisonment of many of the most experienced
cadres. These considerably weakened our Party's activities in the
Negro field, as in other fields, during the last years. Nor should
we fail to recognize the extremely difficult conditions under which
our Party had to work for the last 5 or 6 years, conditions which
are far from ended.
Heroic work under the most trying conditions was performed
by the members and leaders of our Party during the period of the
Korean war, at the apex of the McCarthyite pro-fascist hysteria,
in the struggle against jim crow. Our Party played a very im-
portant role against army jim crow. Even in the very recent period,
the beginning of improvement in our Party's work in this field
can be noted in several states in respect to immediate issues. In
the dramatic reaction of the Negro people to the savage Till
lynching, the Autherine Lucy case, and in the recent Civil Rights
Assembly in Washington, etc., our Party participated, with many
broader forces, in the succP.ssful national actions around these
events.
However, these are but the barest beginnings. Any idea that we
can rest on our past laurels- no matter how glorious- must be
forthrightly dismissed. Much self-criticism and basic reevaluation
is necessary if we are to assess the degree to which we ourselves
have contributed to our present isolation from the main struggles
for Negro rights. Without underestimating the positive, I'd like
29
 to concentrate mainly on some of our shortcomings.
The·relatively extreme isolation of our Party in the struggle for
Negro rights must be viewed with alarm, and should be met by
·careful examination and bold correction.
The Dennis report to the National Committee made a contri-
bution in placing left sectarianism as the principal overall danger
for the Party. T his applies with special validity to our activities
for Negro rights. He was, in my judgment, correct also in signalling
the right opportunist passivity that infects our work in this field.
T his, however, was a disputed question in the discussion of the
National Committee on this report. (In order to throw further
light on this question it was unanimously agreed that a survey
of our white membership's activities in white communities, organ-
izations and shops should be undertaken and that a report would
be made to our Party on all levels concerning these findings.)
The weaknesses and mistakes of our Party in this field h ave
been, in my judgment, primarily left sectarian, though right mis-
takes were made also. This is understandable in view of the com-
plex, many-sided nature of the Negro question.
But the words " left sectarianism" should not be applied as a
cliche to avoid serious examination of other basically important
problems and weaknesses in our Party's work in the Negro field-
such problems as white chauvinism, bureaucracy, male supremacy,
etc. T o ignore these problems, or to fail to correctly solve them
h ampers our Party's correction of our mistakes in this field and
weakens our efforts to achieve all other tasks.
There is no doubt that the desperate attempts of the American
ruling class to distort the self-critical aspects of the 2oth Congress
of the CPSU and the self-critical review now going on in our Party
are for the purpose of aborting the broad new relationships and
possibilities for unity which are inherent between Communists and
non-Communists in the USA and all over the world. Such pos-
sibilities are greater among the Negro people than, perhaps, among
any other section of the American people.
The principal sectarian errors of our Party in the struggle for
Negro rights over the last decade flowed from the faulty overall
estimates of the Party in respect to the tempo of fascist develop-
ments, the imminence of an economic crisis, etc. They h ad their
30
 particular expression in the area of Negro rights, for which I bear
considerable personal responsibility. Let us examine three aspects
of our Negro work: trade union, civil rights and our basic theory.
Banking on the onset of an immediate major economic crisis,
we helped with other forces to organize the National Negro Labor
Council, a left center. Although we emphasized in words the main
duty of working in the existing labor organizations, in practice
we made this center the principal base of left and progressive
operation. The result was the isolation of many Negro trade union
cadres from the main body of the Negro and white workers. This
cadre, many of them experienced and revered, became al~ost
powerless to affect the mainstream of organized labor, moving in
the direction of the merged AFL-CIO, and toward improved posi-
tions for Negro workers. The consequences that flowed from this
sectarian mistake disoriented our work in the Negro field, frustrated
our cadre and curtailed our contributions to the Negro-labor
alliance. In the same vein was our long existing negative attitude
toward Randolph, Townsend, Weaver and others-based exclusively
upon their wrong attitude toward the Soviet Union and foreign
policy. It was correct to be critical but we should have maintained
a positive attitude toward Randolph's role, his long and important
fight against jim crow in the AFL, a fight weakened by the passivity
of our Party and white left trade unionists. We are still paying a
heavy price for these errors. Randolph is today not alone vice pres-
ident of 16 million trade unionists but one of the most highly
respected leaders of the Negro people-and justly so.
In the field of civil rights, a dramatic expression of our sec-
tarianism was the mis-orientation of our Party on the Report of
Pres. Truman's Committee on Civil Rights back in 1948. This
report was something new in the life of U.S. capitalism and its
chief spokesman in the White House. The Negro people, and a
coalition of forces of which our Party was a part, compelled the
government to frankly acknowledge the jim crow oppression of
the Negro people before the nation and the world and to propose
remedies limited as they were. We could approve virtually every-
thing in the report except a brief anti-Communist section, which
we proceeded to elevate as the heart of the document. While the
Negro people hailed the document as a platform of struggle, we
31
subordinated its main pos1t1ve import, took a negative attitude
toward it and based ourselves on the anti-Communist section.
Wrongly, we pilloried Negro members of the Committee and
allowed our position to be distorted by the expediencies of the
narrow Progressive Party venture. We have not recovered from
our mistake on this question-a mistake made at the very inception
of today's hroad struggle for civil rights. This was one of the first
contributions to our present isolation from the mainstream of
civil rights. Failing to listen to the overwhelming majority of the
Negro people and their reformist spokesmen, arbitrarily we made
the main test of struggle for Negro rights for everyone, opposition
to the Truman-Wall Street "containment of Communism" program
and the Marshall Plan. As life shows, the Negro people, or their
allies, didn't a ccept our self-imposed test (Comrade Winston and
others opposed this sectarian view.) Capitalist demagogy is fought
by mobilizing the workers and masses for the realization of its
promises.
Our National Committee has properly d irected a special sub-
committee to initiate a draft document for Party discussion after
a thorough re-examination of our theoretical position on the Ne-
gro question. This is long overdue, and I will not attempt to usurp
the findings of the Committee or decisions of our Party. But it
would seem that the slogan of self-determination should be aban-
doned and our position otherwise modified and brought up to date,
expanding our creative application of Marxist-Leninist science
in the light of the special American features of this question. We
did not do this sufficiently in the past. We must reexamine all
wrong and sectarian concepts on this question, which have long
given the wide impression that we were seeking to import a foreign
formula and apply it dogmatically as the solution. Utilizing Sta-
lin's contributions on the national and colonia l question, our
Party has derived tremendous and unique strength from viewing
the Negro question as a national and special question, and that
in my judgme nt is still sound. But we should review the rigid and
mechanical application of these principles to our country, espe-
cially to the Negro people in the Deep South. This has led to
confusion and misconceptions to the effect that the Negro people
must necessarily establish a separate nation-state to secure their fu ll
32
citizenship. Our theoretical pos1t10n has always had certain sec-
tarian implica tions which today stand out more sharply. Stalin's
well-known contributions on the national question gave the "cult
of infallibility" special prerogatives in our theoretical work on
the Negro question. That this has adversely affected our current
work and perspectives is beyond question. Today, the Negro peo-
ple in the South are fighting for integration and are moving in
the direction of democratic representative government, not towards
a separate state. We should have a due regard for the· complexity
of the theoretical aspects of the N egro question and a healthy
respect for its positive features. We must not "throw out the baby
with the bath water." Nor, it seems to me, should we attempt tO
say the last word about the future, as was our tendency in the past.
It would be fruitful to leave a collective and more exhaustive
reexamination of our theoretical position to the draft document for
pre-convention discussion. Throughout our Party are many in-
teresting and constructive ideas on this question, which must be
taken into account if we are to strengthen, not weaken, the theo-
retical basis of our Party's special contributions to the struggle
for Negro rights.
My report to the 15 th National Convention of our Party
recognized certain left sectarian dangers and polemized against some
c f the most disorienting excesses of those dangers. But in other
respects, it still contained sectarian weaknesses, particularly in
respect to a certain narrow approach to the positive role of the
Negro middle class and petit bourgeois in all-class unity of the
Negro people, and also in the way in which the struggle against
white chauvinism was placed .
• • •
Dogmatic, mechanical, or intolerant methods of .fighting for the
main tactical line of our Party, or the incitement of atmospheres
in which comrades recoil from the expression of differences are
self-defeating. That is particularly true in respect to the Negro ques-
tion which has a myriad of unique facets which should not be
oversimplified.
Above all, we fight for the main line of our Party with correct
methods, scrupulously avoiding tendencies toward "conunandism"
33
and bureaucracy imposed upon our Party by the difficult working
conditions of the last years.
Irrespective of the overall tactical line of the Party, one of the
biggest factors in the Party's struggle for Negro rights is the ques-
tion of white chauvinism. Our Party hasn't kept pace with develop-
ments in life on this question, and its position is now wrapped in
controversy. Such a state of affairs impedes and distorts the struggle
for the main tactical line of the Party, and slows down the neces-
sary corrective measures which the Party must make in this field.
Among the main reasons for this unclear situation is the specia l
campaign against white chauvinism launched by the Party in 1949
and ended around 1952. While this campaign had positive effects,
it fell into errors and left excesses which did serious damage to the
Party- to Negro as well as white members, to the mass struggle of
the Party for Negro rights. In my judgment, some of the main
reasons for these excesses were: first, a divorcement of the campaign
from the mass struggle for Negro rights, and its pre-occupation
almost exclusively with internal Party struggle; the substitution of
internal administrative and disciplinary measures for an ideologica l
and educational campaign; the fact that the internal struggle too
often intensified tensions between Negro and white cadres instead
of easing them; and finally that this campaign, like all other phases
of our work during this period, was heavily influenced by the over-
all left sectarian weaknesses of the Party.
Serious errors in the campaign against chauvinism are no excuse
for abandoning the necessary struggle against white chauvinism
either internally or externally, nor for permitting an ideological
vacuum to obtain around the question. Our Party's previous sharp
clarity on this question should be restored forthwith, but without
returning to excesses of any character whatsoever. Our aim should
be to examine the situation and to place the question correctly.
Tensions between Negro and white cadres and members are of ·
the most urgent concern to all members of the Party, Negro and
white. The unity of the Party is a principled question and should
be fought for by all members- Negro and white- under any and
all circumstances. Congressman Adam Powell, ten years ago, in
his book Marching Blacks, said that "there is more racial brother-
hood in the Communist Party than in any Christian Church in
34
America." We seek ever to be worthy of that compliment. We
preserve Negro-white unity as the apple of our eye-as the founda-
dation of all struggles for the peace, progress and equality in our
country. In this spirit, we seek to place this question on a sound
footing, mindful of the fact that our responsibility is to be judged
by changed conditions, marked by the unprecedented modern
upsurge of the Negro.
First to be noted is that the period of left excesses in the strug-
gle against white chauvinism in our Party is over-and we hope
for all time. In its place is not to be substituted false theses, such
as that no struggle against white chauvinist ideology in our Party
should take place at all, or that bourgeois Negro nationalism is
now the so-called "main danger" in our Party. In my opinion,
e.i ther of these wrong concepts would have the most dangerous
effects upon our Party and its struggles for Negro rights; and both
are to be found in various sections of our Party.
It is my opinion that the struggle against white chauvinism a nd
bourgeois n ationalism must be placed in a different way in our
Party. We should no longer place it as the "main danger" and the
" lesser danger." First, the danger concept distorts the character and
contributions of our Party. Secondly, this placement of the ques-
tions in terms of "dangers" was perhaps always incorrect in our
Party, since it created an apparent basic contradiction between
the inherent role of our Party, and the fact that ind ividual mem-
bers of the Party occasionally reflect white chauvinist ideology.
In m y opinion, the placing of the question in terms of "dangers"
is misleading. It facilitated the wrong concept that our Party,
based upon the struggle for Negro liberation, could become a
"danger" to that liberation. In the past placing of this question we
started from theory, instead of from the fact of the whi te chauvinist
oppression of the Negro people and who opposes it.
If we start with the facts of life, we find that wkite chauvinism
is the main ideological weapon of American imperialism in the op-
pression of the Negro people. It is the principal ideology to be
overcome in the struggle for the full citizenship of the Negro
people. I t is the weapon of the ruling class. The other fundamental
factor in this question is the fact that the principal opponents of
the white chauvinist oppression are the Negro people and thei r
35
allies and supporters. The most advanced supporter and ally of
the Negro people in the fight for full citizenship is the Communist
Party. The Communist Party is in the camp of the opponents of
the white chauvinist oppression of the Negro people and, of all
the fighters against this oppression. has the most outstanding record
of contributions of any political party or organization, save the Ne-
gro people themselves. Its Marxist-Leninist science so equips it.
The question before our Party is not whether it is in the camp
of the white chauvinist oppressors, or in that of the fighters against
this oppression. That question is settled by the nature of our
Party as a Marxist-Leninist organization, as the Party of the work·
ing class and the Negro people, as the Party of socialism. It is
settled for Negro and white members when they join our Party.
The only question before our Party is how well it is performing
its function in the mass struggle against the white chauvinist op-
pression of the Negro people.
Therefore, the struggle of our Party against white chauvinist
and bourgeois nationalist ideologies are tasks of our Party in the
fight for Negro rights, in welding Negro-white unity in the mass
struggle. They are not to be confused with the main tactical line
of our Party, which guides the direction and emphasis in achiev-
ing these tasks.
Our Party, while making contributions in the struggle lor Ne-
gro rights, is not today setting the example which the needs and
urgencies of the moment require. It must boldly take the most
demonstrative steps to this end. Internally, the slackening in the
struggle against white chauvinist ideology is manifested by the
reduced sensitivity of our Party on the Negro question; by the
desire of some comrades to sweep the whole question under the
rug, etc.; by the relatively low level of understanding on the
ideological and tactical aspects of the question; and by the hesitancy
of too many white members to take the initiative in all situa tions
where white chauvinist ideology is involved. There are various
expressions of chauvinist ideology-of a laxity in the educational
campaign against this ideology-that can appear among the
staunchest opponents of the chauvinist oppression of the Negro
people.
The main expression of our Party's fight against the ideology
36
of white chauvinism should be in the mass struggle for Negro rights,
in the mass fight against the white chauvinist oppression and op-
pressors of the Negro people. It is the struggle for integration and
full, unconditional Negro liberation. Lagging, tailism or passivity
in the mass struggle for Negro rights is the central way in which
any diminution of the struggle against white chauvinist ideology
shows up. If our Party is to fulfill its role in the mass struggle for,
Negro rights, it should at all times wage an unremitting campaign
against the ideology of white chauvinism. This is a principled
question.
It is my opinion that the present situation of our Party is chat:"-
acterized not by left excesses in the fight against white chauvinist
ideology but by a serious slackening and decrease in the correct
struggle against this ideology.
This slackening manifests itself not only in the lag in the mass
struggle for Negro rights, but also internally in our Party. While
white as well as Negro members join our Party to fight for Negro
rights, they join also for socialism, peace, trade union unity, etc.,
and must have constant education on the ideological, political, and
tactical aspects of these questions and their relation to united
mass struggle. Such education should be a daily, operational feature
of our Party and not just in special campaigns. This education
should be by deed and teachings. It should take into account the
whole new period in which we work-a period requiring new
methods, new approaches to questions.
Perhaps the most important.way in. which the slackening of this
ideological struggle manifests itself within our Party is in the
situation of many of our leading Negro cadres. Too many of these
cadres are under unnecessary political clouds. At a time when the
bourgeoisie is integrating Negroes into the highest positions, our
Party, which first projected the fight for the integration of Negroes
into all levels of American life, cannot lag in striking blows against
notions of racial superiority by its own further unilateral elevation
and recognition of its valuable Negro personnel. The number of
Negroes in leading positions of our Party has declined, not increased,
and at a time when tens of thousands of Marxist trained Negro
personnel are needed for all phases of struggle of labor and the
people.
37
 Our Party must seek to set the best example of all the organiza-
tions in the United States in its special recognition of the tremen-
dous capabilities and increased contributions of Negroes to Amer-
ican democracy. This is particularly true in the promotion and
recognition of Negro women, who are today playing an exceptional
role in the Negro liberation movement. Far from regarding our
numerous Negro cadres as "problems," many of them are able and
experienced trade unionists and intellectuals; we must boldly and
aggressively promote them, ending the lag of our Party behind
many liberal and trade union organizations in this respect. When
N. Y. Governor Harriman, a Wall Street multi-millionaire, boasts
publicly that he is a "zealot" for Negro rights, it is time for us
to take note. Negro cadre is the concern of the whole Party and not
just the Negro comrades.
The level of white chauvinism among the white workers -and
masses has declined during the last years-a fact of no small sig-
nificance. But the conclusion from this is not that our Party has
less to do in the struggle against the ideology of white chauvinism.
Quite the contrary. This indicates that the non-Party white work-
ers a nd masses are more ready than ever to join in the struggle
against every manifestation of white chauvinist oppression of the
Negro people. Any complacency on this question, as expressed in
some sections of our Party, is a serious peril to the fulfillment of
its role. The participation of the Party in the mass struggle for
Negro rights continues under any and all conditions, without zigs
and zags until the Negro people are unconditionally free. The
over-all tactical line of the Party guides the direction of the strug-
gle but does not determine the existence of the struggle. That
struggle began before our Party was in existence; it will continue
with or without our Party. Only by redoubling its efforts against
the ideology of white chauvinism can our Party meet the urgent
demands of the mass struggle for the full citizenship of the Negro
people.
Tensions in some areas of our Party between Negro and white
cadre cannot be wished out of existence by failing to deal with
them. They must be faced up to, their causes ascertained and over-
come by both our Negro and white members. They are an inde-
pendent problem which must be examined on the merits. In my
38
opinion, their main source is political and they spring from laxity
in our Party on the mass struggle for Negro rights and on the in-
ternal unclarity on the question of white chauvinist ideology;
on incorrectly attr~buting the harm of the last campaign to the
struggle against white chauvinism instead of to the serious left
excesses; and lastly, to the overestimation of the gains made by the
Negro people leading to the adoption of ideas of liberalism and
equalitarianism in the treatment of Negro Party members. At the
same time, these tensions have been aggravated by tendencies to-
ward bourgeois nationalist ideology on the part of many of our
Negro cadres.
In adjusting our Party fully to American conditions, we should
never forget that one of ti;J.e proudest traditions of the American
people-even of the most prejudiced whites- is their participation
in the struggle for Negro citizens, beginning with the abolition of
chattel slavery. That white Communists should lead against all
types of chauvinist oppression of the Negro people is not an empty
formula, but is based upon the sound precept that white labor
cannot be free while black labor is branded-and more immediately
upon the fact that it is among white communities, shops and organ-
izations that new extensions of frontiers against jim crow must be
won. It is still true that we must win the great majority of the
white masses to a conscious and more active struggle against the
white chauvinist oppression of the Negro people. The history of
our country shows that this can be done.
Another important task in the Party's struggle for Negro rights
is to combat the ideology of bourgeois Negro nationalism.
Undoubtedly, the left excesses in the struggle against white
chauvinism in our Party were .i ntensified by bourgeois nationalism
among many Negro comrades. This was manifested in our Party
by tendencies among many of our Negro comrades to overestimate
the willingness of the Negro people to struggle under the leader-
ship of left centers, their reluctance to center their work in the
main Negro people's organizations, their treatment of the limited
but important gains of the Negro people as changing nothing at
all, and a failure to unite the struggles of the Negro people with
the Puerto Rican, Jewish, labor and other sections of the popula-
tion. Our Party has a particular ideological responsibility of
39
acquainting the Negro people with the great strength they derive
in their struggle from the growth and influence of the socialist
countries led by the Soviet Union, from People's China and the
European democracies, from the Asian colonial revolutions and
from the neutralist camp led by India. The upsurge of the Negroes
in the South is a part of all oppressed mankind's battle for free·
dom and dignity.
Our N egro comrades have the prime duty of combating all
bourgeois separatist ideology among the Negro peop~e. With the
dominant trend among Negroes for integration, including their
welcoming of white allies on every level of life, the conditions are
more favorable than ever for defeating it. An example of this is
that the NAACP has already raised as a popular issue the neces-
sity of tackling those 29 states that ban interracial marriage. Our
Negro comrades should try in every way to show the indivisible
connection between the struggle of the Negroes for civil rights and
the developing struggle of all sections of the American people for
civil liberties, for restoration of the Bill of Rights, for the unity
and strength of the labor movement.
One must mention, too, right opportunist tendencies among
some of our N egro comrades, who tend to idealize and adopt an
uncritical a ttitude toward Negro bourgeois and reformist leaders,
underestimating the tremendous growth and potentia l of the Ne-
gro proletariat. They tend to negate the independent role of the
Party altogether. The biggest danger in the controversy in this
field which raged in our Party more than a year ago, especially in
New York, was sectarianism, a resistance to fighting for the all-class
unity of the Negro people. Our state Party in N ew York made
positive contributions in this fight. This too involved a serious
manifestation of the sectarian danger in our Negro work.
Within the framework of the national front of the Negro peo-
ple, our Party must base itself on the Negro workers and masses,
while strengthening its ties and relations with all sections and
classes of the Negro people. One important path to the mainstream
of struggle is through our self-sacrificing struggle for the needs
of the Negro people in the ghettoes. But we must be ever more
innovating in finding new forms and relations with all sections
of the Negro communities.
 The special militancy of our Negro comrades, however, should
not be confused with bourgeois na tionalism. The ardor and aspira-
tions of the Negro people for freedom have been whetted. Our
Negro comrades, like the Negro people, are demanding more and
quicker. They have less and less patience with neglect and insen-
. sitivity to their opinions, their right to share with equa lity in
determining all questions. Their aspirations are for the Party to
win .jts rightful place among the Negro people as well as among
the workers generally.
T hey are inspired by Bandung and the successful colonial
liberation movements in Asia and Africa, to which our Party hasn't
given sufficien t a~tention. But we have to guard against the view
that the course of development of the colonial movements abroad
will be duplicated for the Negro people in the South.
The Negro comrades naturally feel an exceptional pride in the
struggles of the Negro in the South; nor does ever y outburst of their
special militancy mean bourgeois nationalism. We must carefully
d ifferentiate between the two.
Our Negro comrades no less must help to create the a tmosphere
for our white comrades to assume their full initiative in the strug-
gle against wh ite chauvinism. They should combat all " lone wolf"
tendencies to substitute individual methods for the collective. Our
Party has an especially important ideological role to play among
the Negro people on the perspective for socialism, on the tre-
mendous achievements of the socialist lands and on a host of ques-
tions in the Negro's mind. A Marxist publication of some kind is
still necessary in this field.
Within the framework of a new and more flexible concept of
Party unity, our Party in the Negr o communities should be an
independent force, the most self-sacrificing, modest worker for
all-class unity, seeking to infuse into ·i t consciousness as a part of
a n anti-monopoly coalition for democracy and peace.
T hese are some of the important and complex factors which
should be taken into consideration in applying the sound main
line of our Party to the field of Negro work, in guaranteeing the
Party's heightened role in the mass struggle for Negro rights, a nd
in the crucial '56 elections. A true Marxist-Leninist approach em-
41
braces all these factors; it encompasses the many-sided richness of
life and struggle.
It seems to me that our Party, despite difficulties, blows, and
mistakes, has a relatively better regard from the Negro people,
than from among any other section of the population. This warm
attitude toward our Party has been earned over the last quarter
century. Even so, it does not start from scratch. And we are on
the eve of the broadest and strongest relations with the Negro peo-
p le than ever before in American history.
Our Party today, Negro and white members, and especially our
leaders must raise the level and quality of our work in this field
in accordance with the new and rich challenge of today. This, it
is my abiding conviction, it will do-and with · flying colors. To
the extent that we do, that much stronger and more successful
will be the whole struggle for the full, unconditional equality of
the sixteen million American Negroes now.

VII. Negro Rights and the Elections

The 1956 elections offer an extraordinary opportunity for ad-
vancing the cause of Negro rights, for implementation of the Su-
preme Court desegregation decisions and for lifting the whole level
of the struggle for civil rights and civil liberties in general. That
is because the whole American people-the majority of whom wish
to cleanse the country of the foul lynch system- have an oppor-
tunity to participate concretely in the struggle, particularly for
the emancipation of the Negro in the South. It is desirable that
the issue of civil rights be so sharpened with respect to both parties,
that no matter which wins, a clear mandate will exist for throttling
the Dixiecrat-White Citizens Councils and for compelling the Fed-
eral government to enforce immediately the citizenship rights of
both the Negro and white people in the South. Effective political
action by the whole American people can strike a blow against the
jim-crow political tyranny in the South, which menacingly retards
the peaceful pursuits and social progress of the entire nation.
One of the outstanding features of the campaign thus far is
that the Negro people, pl us their labor and other allies, have in-
tervened constructively in the election campaign forcing the civil
4~
rights issue to the fore and compelling certain candidates to change
their tune. Far more needs to be done along this line in terms of
platform and deeds. And, for the moment, the time and medium
through which to do it is at the platform hearings of both the
Republican and Democratic Parties. The Michigan State Demo-
cratic Party convention, presided over by Representative Charles
Diggs, was a good example of the adoption of a relatively strong
civil rights plank. Undoubtedly, this was achievable in no small
part by the influence of the powerful U AW and by the strength
of the Negro-labor alliance in that area.
Another feature of this election year is the tremendous im-
portance of the Negro vote. Statistics show that there are now fi ve
million Negroes in the Northern, mid-Western, and Western in-
dustrial centers, increasing the decisive character of the Negro
vote, particularly in the Northern and border states. It is conceded
that in 61 Congressional districts throughout the land, the Negro
vote is decisive; in addition, the Negro vote holds the potential
balance of power in the presidential race in thirteen states. Un-
doubtedly, the important but limited gains made by the Negro
people in the last six years, were a result in part of the pressure of
the increasing Negro vote. This is true to some extent even in the
South-as relatively sparse as the Negro vote is there.
The Republicans have opened one of the most intense propa-
ganda campaigns in the last fifty years to recapture the Negro vote,
lost since 1932 to the Roosevelt New Deal, Truman, and the Demo-
cratic Party. This campaign seeks to re-establish an alliance be-
tween the Negro and Big Capital. It would be wrong to underes-
timate this campaign; for the Eisenhower Administration is al-
ready associating the recent gains of the Negro with the GOP, in-
cluding their unprincipled use of the fact that Chief Justice War-
ren is a Republican, in connection with the desegregation decision.
Coupled with this, is the performance of the Eastland-Byrnes, etc.,
Dixiecrat wing of the Democratic Party, which not a single leading
Democratic Presidential aspirant has repudiated. Even more
dramatic is the elevation of the Dixiecrat Eastland to chairmanship
of the Senate Judiciary Committee, with the power of life and
death over all social and civil rights legislation! The GOP is
demagogically taking advantage of all these Democratic Party
43
blunders, including the failure of the Democrats to drive the East-
land Dixiecrats out of the Party.
The GOP intends to win the Negro vote. Lacking this, it hopes
to split it, rendering the Negro people impotent in the Presidential
and Congressional elections.
The principal basis upon which to combat this is on the non-
partisan character of the civil rights issue. A strong lead in this
direction has been given by the NAACP national convention in
San Francisco, by the State-of-the-Race Committee, comprising a
representative group of virtually every point of view among the
national leaders of the Negro people. The overwhelming consensus
of opinion is that the Negro people will consider candidates on the
merits of their civil rights record. This is sound. It tallies with the
statement of Reuther and Meany of the AFL-CIO that the Demo-
cra tic Party cannot have the "Eastlands and us" too.
Hence, conditions are present in this campaign for the closest
alliance of the Negro people with labor, with the farmers, with
urban small business and middle-class forces, in behalf of civil
rights and toward the establishment of a broad coalition against
the monopolies which have grown to a dangerous super-power dur-
ing the Eisenhower-GOP Administration . One of the first objec-
tives is that this coalition should register its combined unity in
this election, fighting off splits, and seeking to tear asunder the
Republican-Dixiecrat coalition. These Congressional elections are
of the utmost importance, involving the quest.i on of the passage
of civil rights and other progressive legislation.
Negro representation is another major issue of the campaign.
The situation of only three Negro Congressmen out of 435 is a
disgrace to America, and the absence of a single Negro U.S. Senator
reflects the basic oppression of the American Negro. Nor are the
Republicans asleep at the switch. Already, the N.Y. State Repub-
lican leaders are discussing the possibility of a Negro for the place
of Senator L ehman, whose term expires this year. Meanwhile, the
Democratic Party in various states is lagging and even ignoring
the legitimate demands of the Negro people for representation
in all levels of the government, federal and state. Every opportunity
to increase Negro representation should be supported. T his is a
non-partisan issue. Likewise, the specifics of each given situation
44
should be carefully examined with a view to preventing the at-
tempts of reactionaries in either Party to split the Negro vote, to
divide the Negro-labor alliance under the guise of advancing Ne-
gro representation. The first guarantee of increasing such represen-
tation is the collaboration of the Negro people and labor, with
the latter acquiring a more urgent understanding of the demands
of the Negro people in this regard and how they coincide with the
vital interests of the trade unions. This will help to ease the strains
in the Negro-labor alliance resulting from the exceedingly ad-
vanced Negro li beration movement.
The South is specia l. The upsurge of the Negro there is the
main source of the national unity of the Negro people. And the
fundamental question there for the elections is the guarantee of
the right of the Negro to vote, not only in the urba n areas but
also in the rural backwoods South . It should be universally de-
manded of the Eisenhower Administration that it stop winking
a t the Eastland conspirators in the South, and that it use the full
power of the government to enable the Negro people, and their
democratic supporters in the South, to vote in the presidential
and Congressional elections, that the Negro people exercise their
constitutional r·igh t to elect Congressmen, U.S. Senators, and State
and county officials! The Negro vote in the South, though small,
and though exercised under the most extreme lynch terror- is of
tremendous importance. It is reported that the Negro vote kept
five Southern states for Stevenson in 1952. Then the vote was some
1,2oo,ooo. T h is year a drive is being made to double the Negro
vote in the South. Not only should the Federal government be
called upon to protect the right of Negroes to vote, but all assist-
ance, financial and otherwise, should be given to the Negro peo-
ple's righ t-to-vote organizations in the South for every practical
purpose.
The Negro people north of the Mason-Dixon line, and their
labor-progressive allies, have in the 1956 elections their biggest op-
portunity to assist the heroic struggles of the Negro in the South.
This they can do with their ballots! With their relatively more
liberal voting conditions, they can do wh at millions of Negroes
in the Deep South are still barred from doing-cleaning out the
reactionaries in Congress.
45
 If the biggest registration campaign in history is necessary for
labor and all other voters in this crucial election, it is a thousand
times more important for the Negro on a nation-wide scale, par-
ticularly for Negro voters in the North and West.
For the Communist Party, this election should be regarded as
a major milepost in plunging into mass activity, and in seeking
to influence the course of events in a manner that will fulfill the
realization of immediate full citizenship of tqe Negro people and
that will register the will of the American people for peace, free-
dom, and prosperity. We can take our first big steps toward break-
ing with sectarianism in the past. Like all other Americans, Com-
munists will exercise their right to influence both major .parties,
their candidates and platforms, in behalf of the full instantaneous
emancipation of the Negro in the South, and for the unconditional
free citizenship of the Negro all over the land. Neither party should
be allowed to blunt or smother this issue under vague phra,es of
" moderation" and "avoiding extremes"- phrases designed to sup-
press the most important issue in the election campaign. Given a
firm stand by the Eisenhower Administration and by the national
leaden of the Democratic Party in favor of upholding the court's
desegregation decree, and in protecting the Negro's franchise, a
long step would be taken toward ending the White Citizens Coun-
cil's violence against Negroes, labor, and progressives in the South.
vVhile the fence·straddling position of the Eisenhower government
is taken in the name of avoiding violence in the South, it is a green
light to the lynching, violence, and assassination presently im-
posed upon the Negro in the South.
Upholding the law is the best answer to anti-Negro violence
and not the capitulation of the Eisenhower Administration to the
Eastlands, Byrnes, Shivers, and Talmadges for the unprincipled
purpose of courting Dixiecrat votes in November. The Federal
government has the power and the duty to use troops and whatever
other constitutional means are available to enforce the law of the
land. It hasn't hesitated to use the force of jail and seizures in try-
ing to destroy the Communists and other foes of jim crow; it should
not hesitate to use whatever force-troops if necessary-to put down
violent defiance of the law of the land, and murderous terror against
peaceful citizens seeking to exercise their constitutional rights.
46
 In establishing the closest ties with the masses, our Party should
seek to build the broadest support for concrete measures to expose
the defiance of the law in the South, and urge action on these
measures at the present Congress. Congressman Charles Diggs'
proposal for invoking the Fourteenth Amendment to reduce repre-
sentation of states that discriminate in the exercise of the ballot;
a change in the seniority system in Congress to prevent such out-
rages as Eastland heading the Senate Judiciary Committee; the
outlawry of the poll-tax in federal elections; support of the Powell
anti-segregation amendment to the school bill; a demand that the
Supreme Court set a specific immediate date for compliance with
the desegregation decision; outlawry of the Citizens Councils-
these are among the decisive issues upon which all candidates and
parties, Congressional and Presidential, should be pressed to de-
clare themse lves.
The heightened participation and influence of the Communist
Party in the elections, and in all other avenues of struggle for Ne-
gro liberation, is not an empty academic or formal question. It is
vital to the strengthening of the whole cause of Negro freedom and
civil rights. The coals of fiery persecution heaped upon the Com-
munists by the government, by the pro-fascist reactionaries and
warmongers, are but a tribute to the contributions of our Party over
the years. They are evidence of reaction's fear that the unique and
self-sacrificing role of our Party will assist this historic upsurge
of the Negro and his allies in reaching even higher and more effec-
tive levels. More than a quarter of a century ago, when our Party
was fighting virtually alone beside the Negro people for their
emancipation from the white supremacy system, it was scorned as
mere "agitators," as "foreign agents," as " trouble-makers," etc. But
our Party, surviving as it has and will, the monstrous persecution
of a jim crow -ruling class, can now view with a certain pride the
present period in which its demands for Negro liberation are now
being raised by all sections of the population as an accepted, legiti-
mate fact of life. In all but the deepest South, the struggle for
the Negro emancipation has become a popular issue-indeed, the
most burning issue in the 1956 elections.
The legality and strengthening of our Party today is a matter
of popular concern to all who believe in expanding Negro rights
47
and American democracy. It is of special interest to all Commu-
nists that our Party and that the Daily and Sunday Worket· be
built in the election campaign. The Negro liberation movement
needs a big, powerful and influential Communist Party and press.
Our Party-with its unwavering socialist goals-has not only the
vital, immediate interests of the Negro rights struggle at heart.
It, and it a lone, seeks at all times to keep before the Negro people,
their labor, farmer, and progressive allies, the next big step toward
social uplift in our land, the building of a mighty united anti-
monopoly coalition for peace, equality, anci freedom.
 KEY PAMPHLETS FOR OUR TIME

The Communists Take a New Look

By EUGENE DENNIS
Report on the general political problems and tasks confronting
Communists and the people in the continuing struggle for
peace, democracy, equal rights and security, delivered at a
meeting of the Communist Parry's National Committee,
April 28 - May 1, 1956. Price 25 cents

The Meaning of the XXth Congress of the CPSU

By MAX WEISS
Report on the significance and lessons of the recent Congress
of the Communist Parry of the Soviet Union in the light of
the history and experience of the Communist Party of the
U.S.A. and its activities, methods, role and program.
Price 25 cents

The Challenge of the '56 Elections

By CLAUDE LIGHTFOOT
Report on the forces, aims, tasks and perspectives shaping up
in the 1956 elections, and the outlook for strengthening the
progressive bloc through greater unity of the workers, farm-
ers, Negro people and other sectors of the population.
Price 15 cents

NEW CENTURY PUBLISHERS • 832 Broadway, New York 3, N. Y.